


Run

by peacefrog



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, First Kiss, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e12 The Number of the Beast is 666, Pre-coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 03:49:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4651119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacefrog/pseuds/peacefrog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do you love me, Will?” Hannibal asks after a moment, voice so tender Will feels as if he could break in two.</p><p>“I don’t have a good answer for that.” Will’s thoughts feel blurred around the edges, cracked. He can feel, at once, Hannibal’s heartbeat and his own inside his chest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run

“Aren’t you going to try and run now, Dr. Lecter?” Will and Hannibal stand across from one another in the dimly lit kitchen, the last hints of the sun’s rays, now dipping down below the horizon, peaking in through the window, painting their features red and gold.

“I did not come here to run, Will. I feared for your life from the Great Red Dragon. It was obvious to me he had faked his death, the Dragon would never turn to suicide.”

“I know…” Will can still feel the recoil of the pistol rattling in his bones. “And I handled him just fine on my own, thanks.” He remains stoic, emotions cowering behind a mask of indifference.

“So you did.” Hannibal smiles softly. “Still, it took me longer to get to you than I had hoped. I am rather conspicuous in this, I’m afraid.” He gestures to his jumpsuit, now yellowing around the cuffs, bottoms frayed and blackened from his journey. “Had to stay off the beaten path.”

“I won’t try and stop you.” Will refuses his gaze, eyes focused instead on the last dregs coffee in his mug.

“I know. But as I said I do not intend to run. You can call Jack Crawford right now and I won’t put up a fight.”

“I recall a time when you opened me up for trying to take away your freedom, Dr. Lecter.” Will smiles bitterly, placing his mug on the counter beside him. “And now you want to give it away for a second time.”

“My actions were never motivated by fear for my loss of freedom,” Hannibal explains, calmly. “You broke my heart, Will.”

“Am I really supposed to believe that you have one?” Will’s eyes flit briefly upward, then back down again.

“You are free to believe anything that you wish. You motivate me differently than others, Will. You of all people should know this to be true.”

“I know you tried to kill me. Twice.” Will sighs, scrubs a hand over his face, exhaustion biting him to the bone. “You killed Abigail. Tried to kill my wife, my step-son...”

“Soon to be ex-wife and step-son, I presume. You are all alone here, not even the patter of paws to keep you company.”

“I asked Molly to take the dogs when she left. Can’t trust myself to keep anyone safe now.”

“So you will live a life of solitude then, now that the Dragon is no more?” Hannibal asks.

“It’s all I have now.” Will feels as if it should be the most obvious thing in the world to the man who saw to it that he lost everything.

Hannibal closes much of the space between them, Will allows himself to look up at him briefly, face unreadable as Hannibal gently brushes Will’s cheek with the back of his hand. The contact is only momentary, and Will does not recoil, leaning into the touch despite his best efforts to remain neutral.

“Why did you...” Will’s voice is barely above a whisper, eyes searching Hannibal’s face but still refusing to meet his gaze. “Why did you turn yourself in, Hannibal?”

At the sound of his first name, finally, at the first sign of that casual intimacy leaving Will’s lips, Hannibal’s expression turns vulnerable, a hint of a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.

“For the same reason I will do so again.”

“Are you...” The words were far easier to say with Bedelia sitting across from him, but Will forces them out. “Are you... in love with me?”

“Yes,” Hannibal says plainly.

Will already knew the answer, but he could almost allow himself to believe at times that Bedelia had lied to him. Hearing the words now from Hannibal himself makes Will feel as if he is floating and falling all at once.

“Do you love me, Will?” Hannibal asks after a moment, voice so tender Will feels as if he could break in two.

“I don’t have a good answer for that.” Will’s thoughts feel blurred around the edges, cracked. He can feel, at once, Hannibal’s heartbeat and his own inside his chest.

“Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.”

“Our pursuits only leave us fragmented and bloody,” Will reminds him.

“Did Molly make you feel whole?” Hannibal is suddenly so close Will can feel his words move the air between them.

“She tried her best to piece me into something resembling a better half,” Will says, sadness, like a stream, flooding the halls of his mind.

“We do not get to choose whom constitutes the other half of our soul.” Hannibal’s hand comes up again, fingers playing at the collar of Will’s shirt.

“How could she have possibly made me whole when...” Hannibal drops his hand as Will struggles to find the words, tears pricking behind his eyelids. “When it’s you. It has always been you. But I don’t want—”

“Some choices are not ours to make. It is true that we can choose to be together or we can choose to be apart, but we cannot choose for whom our soul aches. And we cannot choose who makes us whole.”

Will’s eyes meet Hannibal’s, finally, and he feels as if he is crumbling. Feels as if he could fall at Hannibal’s feet and beg the ground to swallow them whole. He sees their beginnings and their ends, all tangled up together, and he knows they will only end up choking on the inevitability of their mutual destruction. Still, the pull of Hannibal Lecter remains irresistible.

“We would never survive each other,” Will asserts, shoving his shaking hands deep into his pockets, gaze falling to his shoes.

“For even as love crowns you, so shall he crucify you.”

Will removes his hands from his pockets, and without thinking at all, simply acting upon mutual, natural instinct, he brings his hands up to cradle Hannibal’s face. It’s the tenderest touch they have ever shared.

“What if I said yes,” Will whispers against his lips, so close to touching he can almost taste Hannibal on his tongue. “What if I said that yes… I am in love with you, Hannibal.”

“Then I would say run with me, and let us make a place in this world together, and for each other.” Hannibal catches his wrists, turning his head and gently brushing the pad of Will’s thumb on his bottom lip.

“ _Hannibal_ …” Will breathes out, closing his eyes, allowing Hannibal to guide his hand, sighing as Hannibal presses a gentle kiss to the center of his palm.

Will’s hand finally comes to rest on the back of Hannibal’s neck, their foreheads pressed together as the last remaining light of day drains from the sky, the horizon burning amber and crimson and violet.

“Come with me.” Hannibal says, and Will knows that all along this has been his plan. He knows that Hannibal knew he would not be able to refuse him this time around.

“Where will we go?”

“There are things I have in place the FBI never found, nor will ever find. There is a place for us far away from here.”

“If I leave with you they’ll…” Will shudders as Hannibal slowly works a hand up the back of his shirt, pulling their bodies flush against one another. “They’ll say we’re in love.”  
  
“And would they be wrong?”  
  
“No,” Will says after a moment of melting into Hannibal’s touch. “No.”

Hannibal presses a kiss to his forehead, one to the very tip of his nose, and when finally their lips meet it feels like a revelation. Will feels the melding of all the infinite parts of them, all that they are and were and will be together, feels their two halves become whole once more.

“But tell me, Will.” Hannibal breaks the kiss, nuzzling into Will’s neck as he speaks. “Would you ever say to me _“Stop, if you loved me you’d stop”_?”

“Not in a thousands years.” Will says, heart thudding in his chest, knowing he’s never meant anything more.

“That’s my boy.”

Without another word they are kissing again, the room around them now completely cloaked in darkness, silver moon rising in the sky. They will slip away in the night, under the cover of an endless expanse of stars, piecing the shards of themselves back together as they run. But for now, they are making up for lost time, and losing themselves in each other.

****  
  



End file.
